1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scheme for providing information on-line between an information user device located at a user side and an information provider device located at an information provider side which is connected with the information user device through a network.
2. Description of the Background Art
An information presentation system accounting for user's interest can be realized by using WWW as a communication platform and dynamically creating HTML sentences for each user in terms of CGI script.
In order to provide information presentation accounting for user's interest in this system, a user initially makes a membership registration to an information provider side, and then registers information fields of his/her own interest to the information provider side by way of submitting replies to a questionnaire. The information provider then stores in a user DB (database) an information indicating the user's interest (user attribute value) in correspondence to a user ID.
Also, the information provider classifies individual information according to its information field, and sets up an information indicating the information field (information attribute value) and stores it in an information DB in advance.
When the user makes an access to the information provider, the user's user ID is sent to the information provider. The information provider retrieves the user attribute value corresponding to the received user ID from the user DB, and selects and provides a set of information which is expected to suit the user's interest best by comparing the retrieved user attribute value with the information attribute value of each information registered in the information DB.
In the above described conventional system, there is a need for the user to acquire a membership at the information provider side and registers the user attribute value to the information provider side prior to system utilization and there is a problem that this user attribute value set up is tedious. In addition, the registered user attribute value will not be changed until the set up is made again so that there is a problem that the registered user attribute value cannot follow the change in the user's interest. Also, the user attribute values of all the users are to be managed at the information provider side so that there is a problem that a processing load on the information provider become large.
Moreover, there is a need for the information provider to set up information attribute values for all information in order to classify information and there is a problem that this information attribute value set up is tedious. In addition, the information attribute value set up is to be carried out arbitrarily by the information provider so that there is a problem that the set up is not made again automatically even when a current information attribute value is not appropriate from a viewpoint of the user.
Furthermore, when the user makes an access to the information provider, the information provider can easily identify the user because the user ID is to be sent to the information provider so that there is a problem regarding protection of privacy of the user.